


Now, Then, and Now Again

by insert_nom_de_plume



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: DracoxHarry - Freeform, Drarry, Flashbacks, M/M, Magic, Running Away, idk - Freeform, muggle, voldemort - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 08:16:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14398008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/insert_nom_de_plume/pseuds/insert_nom_de_plume
Summary: Harry meets Draco again, years after the great war. He is plagued with memories of their time together when Ron and Hermione had run off, and Harry spent a week alone at a Bed and Breakfast in a small Muggle town.





	Now, Then, and Now Again

**Now**

Harry stands beneath the dazzling chandelier, his fingers loosely gripping the thin stem of a glass filled with sparkling champagne. He’s wandered from the main attraction, which is a synonym that means he’s abandoned a party that was thrown specifically for him. He’s given his speech and all that. It’d gone well, he thinks. Hermione will grill him for abandoning his notes half-way through, but it had all felt extremely fabricated that he couldn’t help but pause mid-speech to indulge the crowd with his obnoxious stream of thought.

Some Aurors on duty stand outside this room, now. It’s only a few doors down the great hall where he can hear the loud chatter of witches and wizards, many he’s never seen before. There are so many doors he could have chosen, he thinks, as he glances at the portraits on the wall, but this one had called for him. The Aurors had found him, eventually, but he didn’t mind. They knew to keep quiet.

Someone’s turned the lights on at some point, and Harry had tucked his wand into his back pocket. Now the chandelier sparkles again, and Harry looks away from a portrait of a young man, to the slow moving crystals that hang from the elaborately painted ceiling.

He thinks he’s in a museum of some palace in the north of Spain. Everything is colorful and made with skilled precision. He can’t imagine what it was like to paint that landscape, or carve that frame.

“Harry Potter. Sir.”

Harry turns to the sound of an Auror calling his name, and startles when he sees his two bodyguards have gained a number.

Draco Malfoy stands at the doorway with his hands on his sides, and his eyes fixed on Harry. He’s dressed in a simple, but clearly expensive suit, his collarbone appearing beneath the thin material of his shirt.

“I just want to talk,” Malfoy says, and he willingly hands over his wand.

Harry approaches them slowly. “That won’t be necessary.”

“I don’t mind,” Draco says.

Harry nods at the guards, and they make way for Draco’s passage.

“I should have known you’d be so ridiculously protected.”

“From the likes you, mainly,” Harry responds.

He thinks Draco hides a smile as he turns to gaze up at chandelier. “Impressive.”

“It is, isn’t it?” Harry looks up as well. “I can’t decide where it’s from.”

“The south of France.”

“I was close.”

They share a look, briefly.

Now, Harry wishes the Aurors would disappear. They’re doing a terrible job and pretending not to eavesdrop.

He can’t remember the last time he’s seen Draco. Not from after the war, or after the trials. He hadn’t been here last year, or the year before, or five ago, when they had their first ball in memory of the end of the war.

“You haven’t changed,” Draco says. “Always sneaking about. It’s too bad your shadows here have caught up.”

“I left my invisibility cloak at home.”

“Where’s that?” Draco glances at him.

“What?”

Harry thinks Draco hasn’t changed much either. He doesn’t mean that Draco hasn’t changed physically. That has changed. His hair is longer, his face is thinner, his lips are pale. He doesn’t look old, not like a wrinkled man. But old, the way Harry looks in the mirror. Or Ron, or Hermione. How everyone just seems _old_ after the war.

He means, Draco hasn’t changed in the way he stands with his legs slightly apart. His hands are in his expensive pockets, and his face is still shut.

“Home.”

Harry doesn’t know how to respond. He thinks of Ginny, but that failed spectacularly. Home is not a place, he wants to say.

The question is, _who_?


End file.
